Shaving could be cause of flesh-eating bacteria in teen

BURTON, Mich. — Dianna Queen put it simply: “It’s been just a horrifying week.”

It’s a week that Dianna Queen wishes she could forget. She says her 18-year-old daughter Kaylee Queen was infected with flesh eating bacteria.

“She has a band starting from her leg and up in to abdomen kind of around her side,” Queen said.  “There was a raised rash throughout that whole area — it was literally spreading up her body”

That’s when Dianna took Kaylee to the emergency room, where she was admitted to the hospital. Two days later, Kaylee wasn’t improving.

“I got a call from her terrified from her hospital room that they were taking her into surgery,” Dianna said.

Dianna says doctors told her two kinds of bacteria attacked Kaylee’s body. One of those types was the flesh eating disease. The other hasn’t been identified yet. 

“They may never know exactly how this happened,” Dianna said. “But going from the site of where it started, it looks like this was possibly due to shaving.”

Dianna says doctors have the infection contained, but Kaylee remains in an intensive care unit.

You may recall another terrifying case involving a Georgia woman was struck by flesh eating bacteria. Aimee Copeland’s case was much more severe.

The college student lost her hands, a leg and a foot three months ago after the bacteria spread so fast that doctors couldn’t stop it in time. She is now home after staying in a rehab center.

Kaylee’s  recovery will be challenging as well. But doctors say she is showing improvement after a course of drug therapy and other treatments. She’s already asking for her cell phone and her mother’s chicken soup.

“She knows how close she came and how serious it was,” Dianna said. “She’s looking at it as a second chance in life.”